Nuclear power plant in Ukraine (archive)

MOSCOW, February 25. /ITAR-TASS/. A top Russian Federation Council member expressed concern over what he described as “a lack of order” at Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, which has neighboring countries worried as well.

“Despite finding itself in strained economic circumstances, Ukraine is a developed industrial country,” chairman of the FC committee on international affairs Mikhail Margelov told reporters. “A lack of order implies the possibility of man-caused troubles. There is no order there: the Ukrainian Security Service has been left without plan of protection of nuclear facilities, and representatives of that body have quit and do not answer phone calls”.

There are four nuclear power plants operating 15 or even 17 reactors in Ukraine, and the total number of high danger facilities in the country reaches 2,000, he went on.

“This cannot but worry Ukraine and its neighbors,” the FC official said.

Margelov compared Ukrainian events to the ‘Arab Spring’, when protests started people discontent with the authorities, corruption, and low standard of living, with extremists taking advantage of the energy behind the protest.

“In Tunisia and Egypt, the Islamists were carried to power by revolutionary romanticists. Instead of resolving socio-economic issues, they began Islamisation in those countries, which, by the way, failed,” he said.

“In the present situation, when law-enforcement bodies have scattered, there is no reliable protection there, cannot be in the near future,” Zyuganov said. “Our specialists, together with European experts, should consider measures of protection, as this concerns security of not only Ukraine, but also Russia and Belarus.”